I am a traveler, a flower observer, and a birdwatcher. I log my travel experience in this blog. This blog is all about my traveling (+birds+flowers). After traveling few of the places from Bangladesh now I am exploring the Ireland. Along with Ireland I'll try to explore the other European countries which are near from here.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Green Bee Eater (সবুজ সুইচোরা পাখি) - Merops orientalis

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Bengali Name :

Shobuj Shuichora (সবুজ সুইচোরা), Shobuj Bashpati (সবুজ বাঁশপাতি).

Common Name :

Green Bee Eater.

Scientific Name :

Merops orientalis

Family :

Meropidae

Bangladesh is blessed with lot of beautiful birds and 'Green Bee Eater' is one of those. This is mainly native to African and Asian region. In Bangladesh this bird is vastly seen. We use to call this as Shobuj Shuichora (সবুজ সুইচোরা পাখি), Shobuj Bashpati (সবুজ বাঁশপাতি পাখি), in Bangladesh. It's scientific name is Merops orientalis and it belongs to the family Meropidae.

Green Bee Eater is a very colorful bird similar to the other bee eaters. It is a small bird having a length of around 8 inches. Main color of the bird is green. The beak is pointed and black in color. It has black stripes at the both eye (kind of Bedouin thing). Below the beak and eye its cyan in color. At the throat it has another horizontal black stripe. Part of the head is slightly brownish. End of the tail looks like a protrude needle at the the center. So with this color combination and the shape, this bird looks really beautiful. There is not distinctive feature found from the bird to distinguish the male and female (which means same).

This is a very fast reflex bird that can catch the flies from the air. It uses to live at the nearby bushes around the wetlands. It uses to perch on a suitable branch, wire, etc and look for a prey. It continuously circulate it's head for the prey. It makes an attempt when it encounters something flying nearby. Regardless the success or failure of the attempt, the bird uses to return on the same perching place.

It is such an amazing display of act (preying) that I have enjoyed many times during my birding. They mostly prey on the bee, dragon flies, or other insects. Those small creatures are really fast, and how nicely these small birds simply chase them down!

Green bee eaters are not good at building nests. It mainly builds it's nest on the bank of the river (or any other steep bank of wet lands) by making a hole in soil (or sand). Both male and female raise the babies. I have seen this in 2012 at Dinajpur (দিনাজপুর), these birds were having plenty of nest on the bank of River Dhepa (ঢেপা নদী). But that time I didn't know much about this bird and thought those as a variety of a parrot.

Its constantly circulating it's head and looking for a prey.

With a dragonfly as a meal.

Green Bee Eater with a bee.

Photos of this article were taken from several places of Bangladesh during the year 2014.